Hailee Steinfield and Haley Lu Richardson in On the Edge of Seventeen

ON THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN
Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
Certificate 12a
☆☆☆☆

THE painful process of growing up has been covered ad nauseam by the movie industry – it’s a genre that is packed with films offering careful observation, puerile jokes, soppy friendship tales and everything in between.

The Edge of Seventeen, however, is welcome: it offers both laughs and a cleverly crafted story that feels heartfelt.

Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) is the central character, a teenager who is gently feeling her way through adolescence. We are taken through some key moments of her teenage life: the sudden death of her father acts as a starting point, leading on to another crisis situation created when her gorgeous brother Darian (Blake Jenner) and her best friend start dating.

Nadine feels horribly betrayed. Woody Harrelson is Mr Bruner, Nadine’s history teacher, and provides some of the funniest lines, a brilliant adult foil to the pains Nadine is facing down. Her mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick) also provides light relief, and shows that the problems you have when you are a kid don’t go away when you get older, they simply change.

Director Kelly Fremon Craig has managed to create a touching, funny and truthful feel of what it means to be at that crazy, painful, brilliant and golden time of life.